Writing in 1954, William Foxwell Albright notes that camels were not attested contemporary with the narratives as found in the books of Genesis and Exodus.

Date
1954
Type
Book
Source
William F. Albright
Non-LDS
Hearsay
Direct
Reference

William Foxwell Albright, The Archaeology of Palestine (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1954), 206-7

Scribe/Publisher
Penguin Books
People
William F. Albright
Audience
Reading Public
Transcription

In the eighteenth century B.C. the ass was the chief beast of burden. In the Cappadocian and the Mari tablets we hear of caravans of asses, but never of caravans of camels; the oldest published reference to the camel dates from the eleventh century B.C. Moreover, the great mass of archaeological evidence now available yields only two or three doubtful representations of the camel during the entire period from the beginning of the third to the end of the second millennium B.C. Efforts to attribute more representations of the camel to this long period have so far been unsuccessful. Of course, there can be no doubt that the wild camels were common in North Africa and south-western Asia in neolithic and chalcolithic times; representations of them are found on the cliffs which line in the Nile Valley and at Kilwa in Transjordan, while camel figurines were not uncommon in late pre-dynastic Egypt. It would appear that the early wild camel was nearly exterminated in the regions bordering on the Fertile Crescent in the course of the third millennium, and that it was slowly domesticated in more remote parts of Arabia during the second millennium, appearing rather suddenly in larger herds towards the end of that millennium. Our oldest certain evidence for the domestication of the camel cannot antedate the end of the twelfth century B.C. These facts do not necessarily prove that earlier references to the camel in Genesis and Exodus are anachronistic, but they certainly suggest such an explanation. Of course, such anachronisms in local colour no more disprove the historicity of the underlying tradition than Tissot's pained scenes of Bible life falsify the biblical story by depicting its heroes as modern Palestinian Arabs.

Citations in Mormonr Qnas
Copyright © B. H. Roberts Foundation
The B. H. Roberts Foundation is not owned by, operated by, or affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.